The Central Election Commission (CEC) turned down on July 15 an appeal by a group of opposition parties requesting permission to launch the collection signatures of Georgian voters to appoint a referendum, in an attempt to find out whether the voters are in favor of directly elected city Mayors.
The CEC announced that the formulation of the question which the opposition parties wanted to put forward at the referendum did not correspond to the law. ?The exact explanation [of this refusal] will be available later,? Gia Katamadze, the CEC Chairman, said at a news conference.
Representatives from the opposition Republican and Conservative parties, as well as from the public movement ‘Forum for Welfare and Democracy,’ who are demanding that city Mayors be elected directly, submitted a request on to the CEC on June 16 to launch a collection of 200,000 signatures of Georgian voters, the amount needed to hold a referendum.
They formulated the referendum question as follows:
?Do you agree or not that Mayors/Heads of Districts of all settlements of Georgia should be elected through direct voting by the residents of these settlements??
According to the CEC members, the group of opposition parties did not fully take into account the remarks made by the CEC on July 14, a day before making a decision, including the remarks regarding changing the words in the referendum question ?direct voting? by ?direct elections.?
July 15 was the deadline for the announcement of the CEC?s ruling, according to the law. The opposition parties accused the CEC officials of deliberate prolonging the process of considering their appeal, claiming that this procedure did not require so much time, although the law gives the CEC the right to announce its ruling within one month.
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